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RAILMOVIES: BELGRADE-BAR
In 1974, during the regime of Marshall Broz Tito, a railway track was built between Belgrade in Serbia and Bar in Montenegro. A connection between two fraternal nations, 'two eyes in the same head', as the later Yugoslavian leader Slobodan Milosevic phrased it. But times have changed: Milosevic is incarcerated in The Hague, arraigned by the Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia, and Serbia and Montenegro have signed a loose federation treaty that seems to be the overture of a definitive separation, of which fierce advocates and opponents live in both countries. Most travellers on the railway section, though, mainly want to survive economically. The film portrays two Montenegrin conductors, a Bosnian signalman and a smuggling gypsy. The track itself has already anticipated the dissolution: on the Serbian part of the section, only Serbian trains with Serbian conductors run nowadays, and across the border Montenegrin trains are manned by Montenegrins.
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